This paper reports on the design, modeling, fabrication, and characterization of a novel silicon bulk micromachined vibratory rate gyroscope and a 3-axes rotation sensing system using this new type of microgyroscopes designed for microspacecraft applications. The new microgyroscope consists of a silicon four leaf clover structure with a post attached to the center. The whole structure is suspended by four thin silicon cantilevers. This device is electrostatically actuated and detects Coriolis induced motions of the leaves capacitively. A prototype of this microgyroscope has a rotation responsivity (scale factor) of 10.4 mV/deg/sec with scale factor nonlinearity of less than 1%, and a minimum detectable noise equivalent rotation rate of 90 deg/hr, at an integration time of 1 second. The bias stability of this microgyroscope is better than 29 deg/hr. The performance of this microgyroscope is limited by the electronic circuit noise and drift. Planned improvements in the fabrication and assembly of the microgyroscope will allow the use of Q-factor amplification to increase the sensitivity of the device by at least two to three orders of magnitude. This new vibratory microgyroscope offers potential advantages of almost unlimited operational life, high performance, extremely compact size, low power operation, and low cost for inertial navigation and altitude control.